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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25517398">the lengthening drop</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/AlchemyAlice/pseuds/AlchemyAlice'>AlchemyAlice</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Terror (TV 2018)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Canonical Character Death, Gen, M/M, Magical Realism, Post-Canon</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-07-25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-07-25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-05 06:35:28</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Major Character Death</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,686</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25517398</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/AlchemyAlice/pseuds/AlchemyAlice</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Aglooka lingers, but he is never cold.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Captain Francis Crozier/Commander James Fitzjames</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>53</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>the lengthening drop</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>My teensy contribution to a hugely impressive fandom who has already pretty much done this more beautifully and more cleverly than I could ever manage, but hey, I started this ages ago, rediscovered it moldering away in gdocs, and figured I'd finish it.</p><p>I've tried to do some due diligence on Netsilik culture, but if there are egregious missteps, feel free to let me know. On the other hand, I did no due diligence on geography at all--accuracy was sacrificed at the altar of drama. Sorry 'bout that.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The grimy, whisper-thin skin of James’s throat was soft, like kidskin or silk, and flexed like wet paper. Francis would remember the feel of it under his hand for the rest of this benighted life. </p><p>He sat back on his heels, and shut the dark eyes staring sightless at the tent canvas. Francis had never been a great connoisseur of poetry, but he found a great hatred for the Romantics welling up in him suddenly, for their imaginings of beauty in a transcendent death. Death in the cold and dark was mundane, quiet, and rimed with the sweat of final suffering. </p><p>As he forced himself into motion, thoughts sluggish with grief, Francis did not notice the curling font of warm air corkscrewing upwards at his side, unexplainable by the configuration of the tent flaps.</p><p>-</p><p>Aglooka was cognizant of very little, in the first weeks of his final loneliness. </p><p>His feet were developing strange calluses in the boots the Netsilik had directed he make, when his own broke down; his hand was roughening with the burn of a spear instead of rigging ropes. He was becoming accustomed to their rhythms of life, though conforming to them was a damnably slow learning process, damnably difficult. He was an old dog, and these were non-trivial new tricks to learn. He made mistakes—once or twice, they were dangerous ones that had his hunting party staring in abject surprise when he survived them. Exposing himself too long to a northerly wind, or not noticing when his gloves began to freeze.</p><p>All the same, he didn’t notice anything until he fell. </p><p>An untimely slip, and then he was tumbling down a pressure ridge and into a divot where seawater had pooled yet remained unfrozen, as open and waiting as a grave. His companions called down to him and began a more careful descent, but he scrambled out of his own accord, cursing his own idiocy, the bluntness of his tread and his inattention. He got enough of a grip on the edge to haul himself, dripping though thankfully not yet wet through, just as hands reached his elbows and shoulders. </p><p>“You can’t go on with those,” Hanta said, nodding at the sodden sealskins. “They’ll freeze you in. We will have to go back.”</p><p>“No.” He shook his head. The rest of the party couldn’t afford to go back with him, not without sacrificing food sources and knowledge of the movements of the caribou herd they had been tracking. He had been out enough to understand this, and felt like enough of a burden to want to not hinder them any more than he could help. “You go on. I know the way back.”</p><p>“It is far. You will be slow.”</p><p>He waved them off. “I’ll be fine.”</p><p>Hanta looked at him with dark eyes, considering, but eventually he nodded. “Take great care.”</p><p>Aglooka nodded. He would. And if he froze...well. At least it would not be a great loss to anyone. Both he and they knew it.</p><p>He shook off his sealskins as much as he could, gave the sledge he’d been dragging to the youngest, and then he walked. Bearing southwest, following the stars just beginning to creep out from behind the curtain of dusk. </p><p>The wind picked up, and that was when finally, finally…</p><p>He was not cold. </p><p>He <em> was, </em>to a point—he could feel the chill on his face, the burn of it no doubt turning his already ruddy cheeks and nose bridge red, and he would never dare take off his layers, so aware was he of the killing air—but deep in his marrow, it somehow did not touch him. The ache that had haunted him on the long walk, wherein his bones had seemed to turn first to stone, then to glass and ice, never manifested. </p><p>He walked, and was cold, but not chilled. When he returned to camp, he explained with chagrin his reason for being returned early, and was met with strange gazes. </p><p>“That is a long walk,” Atuat observed, more neutral than the rest. “Longer when you have been in the water.”</p><p>“Yes,” Aglooka agreed. He felt it, around his wrists where the gloves met cuffs, and where cloth had frozen to his chin. Should he try to rip it off now, it would surely take the skin of his jaw with it. “I will change clothes, and then be warm.”</p><p>He received a dubious look from Atuat, but without further comment, he excused himself to small, lopsided <em> iglu </em> he’d erected next to the far more professional traveling homes of his campmates. Inside was warmer, but not warm, so he lit his <em> kudlik </em> first, and then when it began to raise the temperature of the dome, only took off his outer layers, feeling carefully for where the damp had set in. Despite nearly two hours of walking, he found the majority of the layers strangely dry, and even temperate with his body heat, once he’d shucked the outermost shells of leather and fur. </p><p>Unwilling to discount his blessings, he stuffed himself immediately into his sleeping sack to shelter himself and build more heat within the <em> iglu. </em> The temperature seemed to rise quickly, as he stared at the flickering glow of the seal oil lamp. The smoke curled, thin and nearly transparent, moving with the cross breeze that blew between the entrance and the ventilation shaft up over Francis’s head. </p><p>He was not cold. He should be cold. </p><p>He watched the flames, recognized the oddity, and did not question it further.</p><p>-</p><p>Year by year, the traces of the camps got swept away, the corpses sublimating, the tents and supplies decaying away, torn asunder by driving wind and frost. Aglooka avoided these places now, even when they crossed the Netsilik hunting paths. He was glad, in a way, that the landscape was taking them all back. It was not pearly gates, but it was an embrace, of sorts. An end to indignity, a reprieve from harm. He hoped that eventually, he would come to these places and not know that an Englishman had ever set foot there. </p><p>The exception, of course, being James’s site. </p><p>Francis knew Hickey had gotten into it; it didn’t matter. He knew he’d ordered it hidden, ordered that it disappear and and impart James with some modicum of peace, as much as could be spared by them at the time. </p><p>A part of him wanted to go back and see it, though he would not know the way. </p><p>He didn’t find it for nearly seven years. </p><p>The children that he'd seen as such were nearly grown now. Strong and wiry, they didn’t lean on him the way they once did. They built their own igloos, went out on hunting parties with their elders as the leaders, no longer apprentices. </p><p>As for himself, Aglooka had aged fast, too. Faster than the Netsilik, who had always known this life, and fit into it, hand-in-glove. Even with the familial feelings Aglooka had for the young ones, he did not fit in that right way, and it pulled the years quickly around him. He ate little, spoke when he was spoken to. Tried to show as much kindness as lived in him, which wasn’t always a great deal. </p><p>The one thing he had to offer was warmth. That was what had drawn Kabloka to him, in the early years, as they’d all sat together savoring the first pieces of fresh butchered seal after a successful hunt. He’d been slightly back from the circle, so had been surprised when the child had plopped down next to him. When she shivered, he offered an arm, and she’d slipped beneath it and made a surprised sound before curling in. Atuat had observed this and said, “You have room in your tent. Kabloka has not been sleeping well.”</p><p>Aglooka had thought about protesting, but the weight of Kabloka against him made the warmth seem more real. He’d never regretted it. </p><p>But now they were grown and his warmth continued to curl at the base of his spine, soothing his arthritic knees, easing the long days of travel. He had no one to give it to, and so even when the family had settled down, he began to take walks in the evening, long and circuitous. He could pretend in the darkness that he was anywhere, and when he was done or tired, he knew the stars here well enough now to make his way back to camp.</p><p>He called it scouting, and they let him call it that. After the first few times, Aglooka rather thought that the Netsilik understood his purpose--as his time came near, he wanted to away into the quiet, searching out the small and empty corners of the world in which to curl up and sleep, like a cat wishing to go to its peace on its own terms. He hoped that this was so. He hoped his time was near. He was grateful, always grateful, that this family was giving him dignity.</p><p>But he didn’t go, not for a long while. It seemed that all his body knew to do anymore was linger. For many weeks, he went out and returned, sometimes with seal, sometimes with news of a caribou. Whenever he spotted something useful, the choice to stay out always became untenable. He would serve until he couldn’t.</p><p>The heat of his heart kept beating, a slow churn, a sweeter burn than liquor had ever been. It seemed almost like a shape inside him sometimes; sometimes, it felt like hands. </p><p>-</p><p>They made camp in the spring directly south of the cairn if Aglooka’s memory served, which it only did at intervals, nowadays. He was not tempted to go and see it—it was too far even for him—but he did think of it.</p><p>Spring was beautiful in the Arctic, sudden bursts of life sprouting like magic from the ground, blown in on gentle breezes like breath. Sparse lichen became proliferate; tongue plants pushed out from barren soil to be consumed readily by caribou and musk oxen. Low, purple flowers bloomed like revelations, the color so vibrant as to hurt the senses after the gray and endless winter.</p><p>The warmth in Aglooka’s bones seemed to grow with it. It came on slowly at first, but then it solidified in his marrow, like coals in an industrial engine. Those days, when work was done, he left camp and walked and walked, thinking that <em> this time, this time it’s the end, I will burn on this frozen land as the final funeral pyre for all my men, </em> but then the wind would change, and the coals would subside, and he would turn around and go back. </p><p>“You are feverish,” Atuat said at one point. “You should rest.”</p><p>Aglooka looked back at him. He had become accustomed to Atuat’s expressions, small and fleeting as they were, at least towards him. He reserved his smiles and laughter for his wife and children; for Aglooka, he had kindness, but kindness was not an expression. “Is it a fever?” he asked, raising one eyebrow.</p><p>Atuat tilted his head. “Perhaps not.”</p><p>Aglooka nodded. “Give Kabloka everything when I go.”</p><p>“Yes.” Atuat clapped him on the shoulder. That was never in doubt.</p><p>-</p><p>Time finally came for him in summer. The thaw, of course, the thaw. Aglooka could hear the ice cracking in the distance, like the groans of giants. If there was a Nor’west Passage, it would be opening its arms wide now. Perhaps <em> Terror </em> and <em> Erebus </em>were finally free.</p><p>The family caught two seals that afternoon and celebrated with work and storytelling. Aglooka prepared portions of meat for drying, humming along with songs that drifted among the family members, breathing in salt air and the faint smell of pasque flowers. As evening came on, they ate well, and when Aglooka stood to begin his walk, they all nodded farewell to him as usual, fully accustomed to this latest strangeness from their stranger. He left them as he’d found them, healthy and whole and at peace. </p><p>He began walking north, the polar constellations snaked round by a pale aurora. It was clear and cold and he burned. Less than a mile out, he stopped, and carefully shed his furs, folding them into a neat package that he weighed down with a rock. He was close enough to camp that they would be found and used again. </p><p>Unburdened, he continued, feeling almost afloat, like he’d stepped into the arms of the sea. Every step was slow but weightless, carrying him forward, north, north.</p><p>North until he reached a pile of stones that, hidden as they were in the landscape, he did not recognize as anything. He did not need to.</p><p>As he reached the base of the grave that he did not know was a grave, he gasped and pitched forward, clutching his arms around his middle and shivering, and then the fire left him all at once. Something in the air at his feet shimmered. He stared down at the ground, waiting for the hallucination to settle out.</p><p>“Francis.”</p><p>He didn’t answer. He was well accustomed to the vividness of what memories remained precious to him. </p><p>“Francis, won’t you look at me?”</p><p>He breathed, and his lungs filled with cold air, clean and sharp.</p><p>“<em> Francis. </em>”</p><p>“Oh, do give me a bloody moment, James,” Francis grumbled. His tongue was clumsy in English. He hadn’t spoken it in years. </p><p>“I’ve given you years, Francis; do me the courtesy of allowing me a little impatience now.”</p><p>At that, Francis finally pulled himself back up, blinking, into the light of the aurora.</p><p>“There you are,” James said, wry and smiling. </p><p>“James,” Francis breathed. “You…”</p><p>He was neither in his full finery nor fully without; his fur-lined polar coat was thrown over polished boots and livery of his naval uniform. He looked older, but not so much older, not at all like the end. His skin was smooth, beard shaven. He wore no hat, leaving his hair ruffled and full, silvered at the temples. </p><p>By God, Francis had thought his beloved memories vivid, but he had forgotten so much. The precision of the lines down James’s cheeks, the crinkles at the corners of his eyes. The jaunted angle of his teeth as he cut a smile. All of it had gone, and he never would have known. The tragedy of loss averted made his eyes spring with sudden tears. </p><p>“None of that, now,” James said, stepping forward, down off the rocks. As he came close, he carried with him the furnace that Aglooka had housed for so long, radiating and pulsing, at last fully alive. </p><p>“You could have gone,” Francis stuttered. “I would have followed.”</p><p>“It would have been too soon.” James shook his head. “You needed to see to them all. Lay them all down. They were yours, after all.”</p><p>“Mine, and I failed them.”</p><p>“As did I, as did Franklin. But you carried them to their ends, and that was enough.”</p><p>“And then you were stuck here, carrying me for the remainder of mine?” Francis looked out at the arctic plains, and snorted. “I suppose that’s to form, too.”</p><p>“I didn’t mind,” James said simply. “I wanted you to know what you’d given me, at the end.”</p><p>“And what’s that?”</p><p>“Benediction.”</p><p>Francis exhaled, and no frost issued from his mouth. He thought about the Netsilik, and thought that perhaps he understood. He hoped he'd given them enough in return.</p><p>James held out his hand. “May I show you the way, dear Francis?”</p><p>“You’d better. I certainly don’t know it.” He put his remaining hand in James’s warm grip. </p><p>James tipped his head down, considering their clasp. Then, swift and sure, he brought it to his lips and kissed Francis’s frost-rimed knuckles. </p><p>“Come then,” he said, stepping back. “Up the ridge ahead. It will be beautiful, you’ll see.”</p><p>“I have no doubt,” Francis said, staring after him. </p><p>And when he felt the tug of James’s warm grip on his hand, he followed, and left the cold behind for the summer dawn.</p>
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